Aberration
by Muffled Chimes
Summary: A week before Harry Potter's 39th birthday, he is found murdered in his home. Follow Head Auror Pansy Parkinson as she takes on the biggest murder case of the century, with the help of some unlikely friends. Eventual Pansy/Hermione and Draco/Ginny.


**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or any of these characters. They all belong to J. K. Rowling.

**Author's Note: **I hope you all enjoy this piece. Please review to let me know what you think of it, because I'm really going to need some encouragement to keep it going. Along with this, though, please don't think that I only want positive reviews. I welcome and even _encourage_ constructive criticism! Do you see a plot hole? Tell me about it! Do you have predictions or ideas? Tell me! Inspiration and growth come from all places. Thank you in advance for your help.

CHAPTER ONE

_If I should meet thee_

_After long years,_

_How should I greet thee?_

_With silence and tears._

- _When We Two Parted_, Lord Byron

Pansy Apparated just outside the tiny village of Godric's Hollow with a sharp crack, her official robes billowing around her. It was near dawn, and the peaked rooftops before her were bathed in soft pink light. The windows of each home were dark, the families inside still sleeping. It was peaceful; so much so, in fact, that it hardly seemed possible that something so earth-shakingly horrible had occurred here.

Her heels clicked on the cobblestone as she strode forward. She could almost feel the barrier of the anti-apparition charm envelop her once she stepped into the village. It was so quiet, as if even the birds could feel the disturbance of the barrier and so stayed well away. Quiet but for the clicking of her heels.

The Potter home sat nestled amongst the other houses, no grander and no shabbier than the rest. The front lawn was well-kept, neat and green, and the house itself was made of deep red brick. Once, Pansy might have scoffed at the idea of Potter having a picket-fence life, but now she felt only the heaviest of stones deep in her gut.

No press yet, thank Merlin. It was a wonder the Prophet hadn't got wind of this yet, but then again, her best men were on the job. Plain robes, she'd specified, nothing flashy. No visible badges or signs of distress. Minimal Aurors deployed until she'd had a look at everything. One of Pansy's secret pleasures was how well she'd settled in to her role as Head Auror. It had taken nearly a year for her to gain the respect that her predecessor - an older man by the name of Arnold Humphries - had commanded automatically. But her Aurors didn't so much as grumble when she gave them an order anymore.

As she approached the door, it opened to reveal Alistair Pike, one of her team members.

"Auror Parkinson," he greeted.

Pansy searched his face, which was quite round and generally cheerful, for some sign that the report was false. However, she found that it was almost sallow with seriousness, his blue eyes dark in confirmation.

"Show me."

Pike stepped aside to allow her entry into the house. He closed the door firmly behind her. "Coroner hasn't shown yet," he said and stepped in front of her to lead. "Oggen found him, poor bloke. Came in with some breakthrough on the Rogers case, he said, and there he was, just-"

"Wilson should be here soon," Pansy interrupted. She could deal with the witness later. She found herself looking around despite her resolve to remain as distanced as possible from the scene. Her eyes fell upon a portrait on the wall. Potter, grinning ear-to-ear with his arm around his beaming bride, three smaller faces in front of them. Two boys - both with dark hair, like Potter's. One sporting a grudging smile, the other genuinely excited and with his arm linked through his sister's - a ginger like her mother.

The sitting room looked just unkempt enough to be lived-in. The sofa had pillows that could use a nice fluff, and there was a horrid, disheveled quilt heaped on one end. Dozens of papers were haphazardly strewn across a coffee table. An abandoned mug of tea sat atop a thick folder. It looked as though Potter had been sleeping down there.

She almost smiled thinking of how she was going to rag on him for it, but the expression died immediately. Nothing to laugh about. Her face fell once again into the frown she wore while she worked.

"Just through here." Pike showed her through a doorway down the hall, into a rather large room that must have been Potter's study.

There was a fireplace large enough to stand in, presumably connected to the Floo network, because there was a sprinkling of powder on the mantel, and on the floor, but it looked old. A warm fire illuminated the cold scene, crackling cheerfully away and adding to the eerie silence.

A desk stood before the fireplace, made of fine oak. Augustus Mulberry, a short, fat man with a severe expression, stood beside it. He nodded his greeting.

Pansy only made brief eye contact with him, because her eyes were drawn to the figure at the desk behind him. She recognized Potter's frame easily. He was one of her best, though she never would have admitted it to him. His hulking frame, fit from years of Quidditch at Hogwarts and of work in the field, was slumped over his desk unnaturally. His head was pushed against yet more papers that creased beneath its heavy weight. She couldn't see his face.

She stepped forward, surveying the scene with a critical eye.

"Nobody touch a thing until we get the coroner here," she barked. "And someone get an owl to Creevey."

"Creevey isn't on duty tonight, Miss," Pike started.

"Did I _ask_ if he was on duty?" she said shrilly. "Get him here, _now_. I want the shots from him. Do not question me again!"

Admonished, Pike gave a short nod and exited the room.

She turned back to Potter and stepped carefully around the desk, around his large and comfortable-looking plush chair. It was a deep crimson lined with gold; a tribute, no doubt, to his days in Gryffindor common room. Pansy noted with interest that his chair was not the only one behind the desk. There was another, plainer, wooden one, pulled up to the desk at an angle from some other part of the room.

Potter's eyes were open, the brilliant green dull and glassy, staring straight ahead. At nothing. His glasses were skewed, barely balancing on the bridge of his nose, and his mouth was open, from which leaked a frothy mixture of blood and stomach bile. More was spattered on the pages beneath. Pansy held a hand to her nose against the stench.

Just at that moment, the coroner arrived. Wilson Jeffreys came into the room as he always did, like a whirlwind of excuses and strange non-sequitur comments about the weather. He pulled out his wand, said a brief hello to the Aurors in the room, and waved it over Potter's motionless form as though this wasn't one of the most important wizards in the world lying dead before him.

Mulberry was ready with a quill and pad to write down the details.

"Poor bugger," Wilson said, tutting softly, as if Potter were a small toddler who'd simply misbehaved. "Time of death, approximately half-midnight," he announced after a moment. He waved his wand again, waited in silence, and then said, "Stomach contains traces of acid, and hints of a rather potent potion. I'll need to get him back to the lab, but I believe he may have been paralyzed."

Pansy's stomach dropped. "It wasn't an accident, then."

She only missed a beat before continuing, and she found her composure quickly. "Alright, people, we've got to move fast. I've ordered strict silence on the subject, but you know the Prophet - they could be in bloody Antarctica and still know if a Kneazle scratched its bum back home. Wilson, get Pot-" she faltered. "Get the body to the lab as soon as Creevey gets the shots. Mulberry, have you interviewed the witness?"

"Archer's taking care of that in the kitch'n," he said, looking up from his pad.

"Good. Is the family secured?"

"There's a note on the fridge what says the wife's away," Mulberry responded in the slow way of his. "She gives an address."

"Get an owl to her, urgent. Have her come to my office, and don't, for _Merlin's_ sake, mention what it's for."

Everything burst into motion when she finished speaking. Efficiency was one of the reasons she'd been so successful in her field. Mulberry vanished to owl Potter's widow, and Wilson stepped back to allow Dennis Creevey, who'd just arrived, access to what had just become a crime scene. Creevey looked like he'd just rolled out of bed, his chestnut hair a flyaway mess and his eyes puffy with sleep. His field robes weren't done to code, but he had on gloves and his camera hung from his neck.

"Sorry," he mumbled, and he stopped short in front of the desk, his eyes taking in just what was in front of him. "Bloody hell." He ran his fingers through his already thoroughly-mussed hair. "It's true, then. I didn't believe it when I got the owl."

"Time is of the essence, Mr. Creevey," Pansy prompted, and Dennis started snapping pictures. Pike finally returned from the sitting room and assisted Creevey in numbering each shot for evidence.

Satisfied that the crime scene was now in good hands, she moved from the room toward the back of the house, where a warm glow informed her the kitchen must be. Dawn was already creeping through the windows, and even inside, Pansy could feel the outside world beginning to come alive, drawn out by the sun.

When she entered the Potters' cosy kitchen, the smell of cinnamon and cloves instantly enveloped her. A wreath hung upon the open kitchen door. Abruptly, Pansy's throat constricted. She was thrown for a moment back to Hogwarts, to Christmases there, when the Great Hall was filled with the smell of Christmas feast. She remembered Potter and Weasley sitting amongst the sparse remnants of the Gryffindors, and how much she'd loathed them at the time. Because Draco loathed them, and because they were Gryffindors.

"Auror Parkinson!" Prudence Archer, who had been seated at the circular table in the middle of the room, stood abruptly. She glanced guilty at her cup of tea. "I was just talking to James - I mean, Auror Oggen, about his account. Questioning him, I mean."

Pansy waved off the feeble lie. "I'd like to hear it again, if you don't mind. The condensed version. What exactly were you doing here in the middle of the night, Oggen?"

James Oggen, one of the Aurors who worked under her, and Potter's partner on the Rogers case, looked more haggard than she'd ever seen him. Thick bags accented his bloodshot brown eyes. He'd been rubbing them. His lips were chapped.

He cleared his throat. "I came in around four, through the fireplace. We'd been working nonstop the past two days - you know that, of course - and we'd finally decided to call it a night, maybe around eight or so, but I couldn't sleep. So I started looking into a couple witnesses from the Rogers case, as you do, and I had a bit of a breakthrough. I tried firecalling, but Harry didn't…" he trailed off, his voice cracking.

Impatient as she was, Pansy was used to witnesses getting emotional during the retelling of their experiences. She waited for him to continue, and Archer took a seat again.

"Well," he started again, "he didn't answer. So I threw some more powder in the fire and came through. I found him there, like that, with his eyes all open and all the blood and-"again, Oggen stopped and pressed the heels of his hands deep into his eyes, rubbing furiously, as though he might expunge the image from his mind. "He was dead. Cold. I checked him for a pulse, but he didn't have one, and that's when I owled you. I used some paper from the sitting room. And then I went around the house and made sure there wasn't… I just wanted to make sure Ginny and the kids were okay, and then I remembered he said that she was going out of town for her team, y'know, and the kids were staying with her mum and dad since we've been working so hard." Oggen took a deep breath, distressed again. "It was a week before his bloody birthday."

Pansy swallowed. "Thank you, Oggen. That was very helpful. And you've got all that written down?"

Archer nodded, and, satisfied, Pansy relieved Oggen from duty for the next week. She'd put someone else on the Rogers case, which couldn't benefit from an emotionally-distressed officer any more than it could from a dead one.

From there, she ventured back into the study. Creevey was finishing his pictures, and Wilson, in that magical way of his, had already removed the body.

Pansy cast a quick _Tempus_ charm and informed Pike that, as senior, he would be in charge of processing the scene. "I shouldn't need to emphasize the importance of thoroughness," she said. "Potter is - _was_ - the most important wizard of our age, and a beacon of hope for a lot of people besides that. Today, the entirety of the wizarding world is going to wake up and learn that he's gone." She glanced again at the _Tempus_ charm still hovering smokily beside her, displaying the current time. "I've got to get back to my office and meet with his wife."

Pike assured her that no stone would be left unturned and that he'd get a report written up as soon as possible. She addressed each of her remaining team members in turn, and ordered each not to breathe a word to the press until she was able to speak to the Ministry's press manager. She was amazed, when she stepped outside, to find not even a single reporter. Not even Rita Skeeter had gotten ahold of the story yet.

That gave her some comfort before she Disapparated and reappeared a moment later outside of a telephone booth. She stepped inside, closed it behind her, and dialed 6-2-4-4-2. When she arrived in the lobby, tiredness suddenly washed over her, and she allowed the monotonous, constant buzz of Ministry employees greeting one another before work to lull her into auto-pilot. The elevator ride was long but pleasant, even with the various paper airplanes which hovered about overhead.

There wasn't anyone waiting outside her office when she got there, which told her that Potter's widow wasn't there yet. She unlocked the door with a wave of her wand and stepped inside, then immediately sunk into her comfortable leather chair.

All at once, she was very aware of everything she'd been ignoring for the past hour and a half. Her head throbbed gently, persistently, sending off-shoots even down her jaw and into her teeth. Her joints ached, especially her ankles, and her back felt like someone had rolled it into knots. She glanced at the large mirror which lined the wall across from her desk. Bags lined her eyes, and she wondered vaguely when she slept last, but she couldn't remember. Her hair was still in its severe bun, thanks to a handy charm Millicent Bulstrode had taught her in sixth year. It was still dark, but several gray streaks had cropped up over the years. The lines around her mouth made it look like she was perpetually frowning, and her nose was still short and upturned.

For a moment, a hint of salt at the corner of her right eye, and then a sharp knock on her oak door.

"Come in," Pansy said, and ran the back of her hand under her eye. "It's open."

The large door swung open to reveal a harrassed and equally tired-looking woman of around 37. She looked as though she'd just rolled out of bed and tossed on whatever clothes she had. She didn't wear any make-up, although the remnants of some mascara still clung to her thinning lashes. Her hair, however, was as bright as ever, and in the firelight, it almost glowed.

"You wanted to see me, Parkinson?"

A wave of sudden, unprofessional emotion welled up inside of her, and she wondered how in seven hells you were supposed to tell a wife that her husband was dead.


End file.
